Yale Clarifies That 'Nonconsensual Sex' Does Mean Sexual Assault

A full two years after a sexual assault complaint sparked a federal investigation, and the Ivy League University still can’t speak about sexual assault like grown-ups.

After the July 31 semi-annual report that used a benign, confusing, wishy-washy, untruthful term (“nonconsensual sex”) instead of the correct term (“rape”), and said that in some cases it was only punished with a written reprimand, some Yale students and alumni got mad and wrote petitions and letters of their own.

A group of 229 Yale alumni published an open letter last week demanding their alma mater make reforms to its policies on sexual assault on campus, raising concerns similar to those addressed earlier in August by “Students Against Sexual Assault at Yale,” a group of current students.

In response, Yale’s Title IX Coordinator Stephanie Spangler said that “nonconsensual sex” refers to “one of the behaviors that we consider sexual assault,” and that the school issues “as harsh a punishment as is warranted.” So…uh, sometimes that’s a written reprimand? Well, it looks like we’re about to find out:

In the coming weeks, the university plans to release a series of hypothetical situations to explain how it categorizes types of sexual violence and the corresponding punishments. Spangler said this is an attempt to resolve concerns that the university does not remove assailants from campus.

Soon we’ll know if these “scenarios” are more helpful than a blanket “DON’T RAPE”, and if they also speak to why students who were found guilty of “nonconsensual sex” weren’t dealt with more harshly than with a written reprimand.